Best of the blogosphere

Last year, I posted a year-end round-up of my favorite entries from my "fellow travelers." This was much easier to do in 2008 for several reasons. For one thing, there were fewer sites on my blogroll and as I myself had only been blogging for half the year, I only included entries written after July. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly (and shamefully, from the '09 perspective) I was not a very good member of the blogosphere this year. In terms of my own output - which was sporadic - but also in terms of my participation on other sites.

Certainly, I established a presence at Wonders in the Dark, enjoying the suspense of the countdowns, participating in the lively back-and-forths, and contributing my own pieces from time to time. Otherwise, however, I found myself falling away from following most other blogs with any regularity, and a lot of great writing got lost in the shuffle. Sporadically, I would pop up to read and perhaps comment on individual posts but as such my reading of whole sites was hardly comprehensive. (Since I saw few new movies in theaters this year, I also tended not to check out the applicable reviews, which also played a part in cutting off my reading.)

As a result, combing through the past year's volumes of prose, in order to select my favorite pieces from my "followers" and "fellow travelers" on The Dancing Image and The Sun's Not Yellow has proved difficult. So I've reached a compromise which I think is not only fair, but perhaps better than my original idea. Lazy, perhaps, but also honest and, honestly, more beneficial in the end. I would like to solicit your choices for your own best writing of the year, and I will link it up on my both blogs, same as last year. As a "thank you" there will be three exceptions to the rule: Sam Juliano of the aforementioned blog, Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder, and Ibetolis of Film for the Soul. All of them published some of my work this year and in return, "above the fold" so to speak (the rest of the submissions will be listed alphabetically) I will post my favorite piece of theirs that I have read (though of course they are invited to highlight their own favorites as well).

So please feel free to propose a piece below - I will also be visiting all the sites on my blogroll to solicit submissions. And, though I said no resolutions, I can say that I hope next year I will be able to repay my gratitude for your readership and thoughtful commentary with a more active presence online - I'm even hoping to set aside some time during the busy week specifically for that purpose. Until then, I hope you will consider participating in the round-up - among other things, I am looking forward to seeing the work everyone's most proud of.

What a great idea. I'm happy to participate. Here are my favorites from among my own posts this year.

1. Black Book (a lengthy piece on a favorite film, followed by an even lengthier discussion)2. Damnation (a piece about Bela Tarr later expanded into a much longer essay)3. A Girl in Every Port (a representative piece from my early Howard Hawks blogathon)

And of course, not at my site, I'm extremely proud of the work I've been doing in the Conversations series with Jason Bellamy, from which I'd like to spotlight especially our comprehensive piece about Michael Mann.

Great idea. I don't have the time to make longer posts lately so I tend to favour my work on Talking Pix (http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/) and DVD Times (http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/). My favourite blog posts are (I'm rubbish with html):- my feature on Chinese cinemahttp://screenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/04/chinese-cinema.html- film journalism in the digital agehttp://screenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/05/film-journalism-in-digital-age.html- financing the film industryhttp://screenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/04/financing-film-industry-how-recession.html- a profile of Kate Hudsonhttp://screenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/04/happy-birthday-to-you-kate-hudson.html- the future of indie movieshttp://screenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/04/future-of-indie-movies.html- a profile of Will Smithhttp://screenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/04/so-fresh-why-will-smith-is-hollywoods.html

Thanks, guys - it depends somewhat on the amount of people who respond but I'll probably be doing one post per person - easier to manage, plus I think people are more likely to click through if there's one gateway instead of several. But I will definitely link to this comments section so anyone reading can pursue further (or perhaps gather the "extras" in another part of the post?).

I will probably select my favorite from among all your links - I like that most of you went that route, because even though it's still easier for me, it makes me feel like I'm still making the call! (Kind of like getting someone a gift card instead of a present for Christmas...hope you all had a merry one by the way...)

My commitment to blogging has waxed and waned this year, and I have not been as prolific as 2008, but I did develop my interest in writing short fiction pieces inspired by my interest in film noir, adn these are collected here: Noir Fiction.

I'll post the four that I personally feel like were my strongest pieces of this year -- all of them from my year's best countdown, although one of them was originally published before the countdown even began:

Thanks very much for the shout out Joel. But I can't quite bring myself to say what I thought were my own best features or reviews. I will leave that decision to you. I feel awkward making such a call, though I do not blame or fault others for doing so. This is a fantastic idea by the way!!!

I must say the association with you this year has been terrific in many ways, my friend.

I just feel like Woody ALlen when I blog. I start out with seemingly great ideas in my mind and end up writing what later seems like tepid, cringe-worthy pieces. Anyway, I will give a couple of posts which are the least repulsive, IMO :)

MovieMan — Great exercise to have the film critics turn their eyes upon themselves, particularly since it makes so many of us squirm. My favorite pieces often were the ones who drew the most comments from my readers and enabled some discussions. Perhaps it's cheating then to come up with a list of favorites that were essentially "chosen" by my readers, but I think that's what I'll do:

What a great idea! Here are a few of the ones that I am most proud of from my blog:

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid:http://rheaven.blogspot.com/2009/11/dead-men-dont-wear-plaid.html-this underrated Steve Martin comedy has aged surprisingly well since it first came out in the early '80s.

The Game:http://rheaven.blogspot.com/2009/09/game.html-I love this underrated film by David Fincher that plays out like a feature-length Twilight Zone ep.

So I Married an Axe Murderer:http://rheaven.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-i-married-axe-murderer.html-this underrated comedy is easily the best thing Mike Myers has ever done and deserves to be rediscovered.

The Long Goodbye:http://rheaven.blogspot.com/2009/05/long-goodbye.html-hands down my fave Robert Altman film of all-time.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly:http://rheaven.blogspot.com/2009/04/good-bad-and-ugly.html-my fave western of all-time with an amazing performance by Eli Wallach!

This is a great idea -- Now that I've taken the time to go through all of this year's posts it has given me a chance to notice a definite progression in my writing style and has also allowed me to make a nice year-end recap post of my own.

This is a great idea. I also understand how you feel about being less consistent in the blogosphere this year, as I have had the same problem. It's just been very busy, and sometimes life gets in the way.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with my new blog - Unfettered Tastes, but my film reviews are very short, blunt, and to-the-point, and a lot of people like them that way.

So I'll post two of my personal favorites, and both of these may be two of the lesser known film gems of the year:

Very many thanks for inviting me to this! I will make this list brief.

1. Redacted (2007): Hands-down my most controversial piece of the year. This is my finalized version of the essay that I submitted to Cinema Viewfinder for their Brian De Palma blogathon back in September; in my original essay, I caused quite a stir when I claimed that most of De Palma's earlier works looked "immature" next to the burning statements of Redacted. I regret leaving those comments, and so this new version of my piece omits them. I am still proud of my overall defense of what is still one of De Palma's best films.

Thanks so much for the offer MovieMan! I thought it would be hard to find my favorite post of the year, until I perused my site. Rather than a review, I was quite pleased with the Favorite Characters Of All Time meme I stared.

Thanks, everybody. Hopefully the responses keep coming. This is the first chance I've had to even check up on this post in 24 hours and I won't be much less busy prior to New Year's Eve. As such, the post will probably go up early next week rather than late this week. I'll put up an update post here by tomorrow if that's the case.

Funny how several people have chosen the post I would have chosen, if I weren't worried about missing something else. Looks like I caught the best more often than I thought, if only by accident!

Wow, lots of great comments here that I'm still sifting through, but I wanted to throw out a few articles that I'm particularly proud of from 2009 (reviews from Slant magazine were not included, since I consider that work outside my regular blogging routine).

Well, for the past two and a half months, Glenn Heath from that indelible Match Cuts and I have been counting down our own respective top tens of the last ten years - with a great deal of comparison, and contrast between the two of us in the form of weekly discussions on each of our respective selections. My own ran something like this:

I haven't even started reading the entries yet (as I said, I'm going to choose one each so things don't get too cluttered, but I do plan on including all the other links at the end of the post.) It's been a very busy week but I look forward to tackling this tomorrow, though whether it will also be completed and posted by Monday remains to be seen... We'll just keep it at "next week" and I will notify everyone when it's up. (Of course, the relevant link will be posted here as always.)

Sounds great, Filmist. I'm a sucker for such ventures and have been frequenting a couple blogs with similar adventures in the past year - Dave's year-by-year countdown on Goodfellas and Allan Fish's massive top 50s for each decade (and a top 100 for the pre-1930 period) at Wonders in the Dark. I will definitely check it out.

I'm planning to give my shout-outs to Sam, Tony, and Ibetolis for featuring me on their blog, then I will list a few (probably 4) of my own strongest pieces, followed by a list of all the bloggers who have submitted entries. I'll use one from each - my favorite out of the various nominees - for the sake of clarity and equality, but at the end of the post, I will provide links to all the other posts which were nominated.

A handful of selections from my 2009 post-history. None of them are perfect, but I had a good time working on them, and feel that these four posts at least communicate everything that I set out to accomplish.

First post of 2009; an essay on Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady

From the end of January, an essay on Godard's sci-fi meta-thriller Alphaville

Looking over my site I realise that I haven't written many properly substantial articles on this site this year! This is because my study and teaching are starting to take their toll and leave me not that much time (or drive) to write new stuff here! That said I have notes prepared for a whole series of articles on Josef von Sternberg's early cinema that may come up soon, hopefully (but not that soon.)

For now, I wonder if it would be appropriate to suggest my 10 books list that I did on your suggestion before? I took a bit of care on that... Otherwise it would be between my Ingrid Bergman piece at the start of the year and my piece on Metropolitan. Or if you liked on of the songs I put up it would be great that have those linked-up, though I guess they're not directly related to cinema.

Sorry to be so slow contributing to this post, Joel. It's a great idea you had, and I've enjoyed reading a lot of the articles linked to here.

It's not easy picking my own "Best" of 2009, as I'm far from a preferred judge of that, however, here are five that are at least close to what I wanted to accomplish (what writer is ever really satisfied with what he/she writes?):

Stephen, my understanding is that there are various fair-use loopholes, but I would recommend avoiding You Tube as they take things down at the slightest provocation (usually an automated letter from a corporation sent on whenever they detect a use of copyrighted material, fair or not). I've posted the Astaire-Rogers dances on my blog and never received any trouble, and there will be several 'found-footage' videos featured in my round-up, including one of my own.

Thanks, John - to everyone subscribing to this thread, I'm still working on the post but making progress. I can't read every post nominated - there isn't time - but I'm browsing the selections where no preference has been established, and reading the one I decide to highlight. I'm planning to link the other nominations at the bottom of the post.